Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to spool apparatus and methods of winding a length of cable and, more particularly, to spool apparatus including a flange with a layer of conformable material defining an inner face of the flange and methods of winding with the spool apparatus.
Technical Background
Conventional spools are known to include rigid flanges mounted to a drum of the spool. Methods of winding cable with the spool include winding the cable along multiple layers of windings wherein end windings of the layers of windings engage the rigid surfaces of the flanges. Such configurations are undesirable since winding of the cable from a first direction creating a first layer of windings to a second direction creating a second layer of stacked windings is triggered automatically when the cable encounters the rigid flange, despite whatever cable geometry of the underlying layer of windings is presented. Such conventional winding leads to undesired gaps between cable windings and/or undesired overlaps of cables along the layer of windings. As such, current spools with conventional rigid flanges do not provide for reversing the direction of winding at a selected position corresponding to a proper underlying cable layer geometry where the next winding of the stacked layer can easily fall into the underlying groove defined between underlying windings.